Course: Integrative Approaches to Technology and Society

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Paper Objective: Investigate a failed technological artifact and write a paper analyzing the technology’s emergence, lifespan, and death.

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I chose to write about the Nintendo Virtual boy, which was the first portable 3D gaming system. It was introduced in Japan and America in 1995, but was was discontinued within a year! The Virtual Boy did not fail due to inferior technology, in fact, it was the only device at the time that provided a fully immersive 3D gaming experience. To explore why the Virtual Boy failed, I reviewed several related scholarly articles, numerous related news articles from the 1990s, and various websites documenting the Virtual Boy's technical details and history. Rather than focusing on the technical aspects of the Virtual Boy that nowadays often get cited as reasons for its demise, I looked at what social contributors that were at play. 

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Brief Summary of Main Findings:

• The Virtual Boy’s unimpressive 3D effect, monochrome display, and uncomfortable design are typically blamed for its demise, yet these explanations are all technical and do not take social contributors into account. Nintendo’s Virtual Boy developers appear to have been so wrapped up in their quest to revolutionize the gaming experience through 3D technology that they may have missed videogame players’ lack of interest in this type of technology at the time.

• Any demand there may have been for 3D gaming technology was perhaps stifled by the Virtual Boy’s design, which required the player to place the device on a flat surface and awkwardly face forward and stay still to play. The decisions that led to its uncomfortable design were made out of concerns about liability, not due to technical limitations or a lack of understanding about better design.